I see her fall, gangly and flailing, from the tree. Too soon! I think, and my heart nearly stops because I have visions of her falling under the wheels of the truck and dying in front of my eyes. But she lands with a jolt that pulls the canvas between the ribs into a deep hammock of cloth.
My heart lurches in my chest.
I thought she had jumped too early. That truck is going way faster than I thought it was. It zooms at me.
Terror overtakes me. What if I miss and land on the ground like Khadija did and I crush Seydou? What if I break my neck and can’t help anyone ever again? What if we fall under the wheels of the truck?
“Jump, Amadou,” Seydou whispers into my ear from where he’s clinging to my back.
I struggle to let go of the branch, but my heart is hammering in my chest and I’m afraid. The front of the truck passes underneath us and I know I have to jump now, but I still don’t do it. It’s only as I see Khadija’s panicked eyes flash past beneath me that I find the strength to uncurl my hand from the branch and launch myself into the air.
As I fall, I see the canvas roof streak past below me and I realize I’ve let go too late just as I hit, hard, against the very edge of the truck.
The cloth of the roof scrapes past my face as I struggle to pull breath back into my lungs and scrabble to get a handhold on something, anything. Seydou’s arm around my neck is cutting off my air and black dots are starting to swim in front of my eyes as I swing my legs to try to get purchase. I find myself pedaling against nothing but wind.
Seydou screams in my ear and my panic mirrors his. We’re falling off!
The truck lurches and I grab at the cloth-covered rib, hoping to have the strength to pull my body on top. Knuckles straining, arms burning, I hold myself up as the wind slaps my face, trying to get my feet into the truck. All of a sudden, I feel hands on my ankles. Khadija must have found a way to get under the canvas and inside. Though my arms feel like they’re ripping off with the torture of holding my entire weight and my brother’s, I relax and let her guide my legs into the truck. I twist so that I’m not blocking Seydou’s access and manage to croak, “Go.” Once Khadija has Seydou inside, I drop into the bed of truck.
Gasping, I sprawl across the giant nubby sacks of dried seeds while the canvas roof snaps against the metal ribs above me in the wind. I can feel myself trembling but can’t stop.
“It’s not as easy as it looks, is it?” asks Khadija from beside me, and I have to give a shaky laugh because I can’t possibly imagine jumping more than once.
“Not nearly.”
“I thought you weren’t going to make it and I’d have to jump out again,” she says with a sigh of relief. I roll my head to the side. She makes a face. “I was not looking forward to having to do that a third time!”
For a moment I just savor the feeling of lying safe and secure inside the truck and moving without effort. Then I pull myself into a sitting position.
“We did it,” I manage, untying my machete and slipping my shirt on again.
They smile.
As we sit perched on the nubby burlap, picking the bits of shell out of our smashed hard-boiled eggs and flicking them over the high back of the truck, I take inventory of my various aches and pains and think that, on the whole, whatever hurts now was worth it. It’s been more than two days since anyone forced you to work or beat you, I remind myself. That should be worth some discomfort and uncertainty.
I refuse to think about how all these risks are only taking us farther and farther away from Mali. Staring out the rip Khadija put in the canvas covering to get into the truck, I watch clouds flash by against the flat blue sky. This is a great way to get Khadija home, but I just hope she keeps her promise and helps us do the same.
Lulled by the hot, tentlike feeling under the cloth roof, and surrounded by the spicy, dusty smell of the dried pod seeds, I let the exhaustion of the past few days win and I sleep.
When I wake again, the truck is still moving. But the sky through the rip in the canvas is dark and studded with smudgy stars.
I crawl from my perch on top of the sacks near the cab to get a better look over the tailgate. We’re trundling through a large town, choked with dust and cars and taxis that weave around us, horns blaring. The regular flashes of light are streetlamps, and everywhere there are people. They’re filling the sidewalks, spilling out of buses, ducking in and out of shops. Music blasts from windows of buildings and cars alike. I don’t know how I slept through the noise as long as I did. I look to where Khadija and Seydou are both still asleep, sprawled on top of the sacks like I was. I cross to Khadija.
“I think we’re here,” I whisper so as not to wake Seydou until we absolutely have to. “Now what?”
Khadija looks around the darkened truck for a moment and then wriggles like a fish to peer out as well. When she turns around, though I can’t see her face, I can hear the concern in her voice.
“It’s really late, Amadou.”
“So?”
“The men who came and kidnapped me came at night. It just makes me nervous, is all.”
I nod. The darkness and bigness of San Pédro make me feel lost and small too.
“But we have to get off this truck.”
Khadija stretches her neck stiffly and she doesn’t have to say anything for me to know what she’s thinking. I don’t want to do any more jumping either.
“Where is it going to stop?” I ask.
“I don’t know,” says Khadija.
“What? I thought you talked to the man at the weigh station?”
“Well, yes, I did,” says Khadija, sounding slightly put out. “But I didn’t talk to him for very long. I only got the basics.”
We lapse into silence, each looking out, considering.
“Maybe we should jump after all?” Khadija finally ventures, but just then, the truck pulls to a stop and honks its horn.
“Oh, now!” I say, scrabbling my way to Seydou. “It’s stopped now—we should go!”
“Wait,” squeaks Khadija. “Where’s the med kit?”
“Seydou! Seydou, wake up!” I shake him.
He does wake up, but his movements are sluggish with sleep, and he cries out when I bump into his arm stump by accident. I slow down, worried I’ll hurt him.
“Come on,” I whisper to him. “Come with me. We’re going to jump now.”
Seydou lets me help him toward the tailgate.
“Khadija!” I whisper-shout over my shoulder.
“I can’t find it!” comes her panicked answer.
“What?!”
“The medicine box! It must have fallen somewhere and I can’t find it!”
For a moment I’m torn. We need to get out, but I’m not going anywhere without those two pill bottles. Seydou’s fever is finally going away and, except when I do something stupid like bump him in the dark or hurl him onto a moving truck, he seems to be in less pain too. Despite Khadija’s repeated assurances that we’ll be able to find him better medicine when we find her mother, I don’t want to lose the medicine that we do have.
Letting go of Seydou’s wrist, I move to help Khadija. The truck lurches forward again and I’m thrown off my feet.
“Too late,” whispers Seydou, and I twist around and see that’s he’s right. The truck has made it through a giant wall and men outlined in pools of yellow light are closing a massive metal gate behind us. Wherever it is that the truck is going, we’re locked into going there too.
Behind me I hear Khadija whisper, “I found it.” I don’t turn around again. Instead, I crawl to where Seydou is keeping watch and try to figure out what we do now.
“Where are we?” Seydou asks, licking his lips. “Why does the air taste funny?”
The wind that’s making the slits in the canvas slap against the metal ribs has turned damp and has an unfamiliar tang to it. I shrug.
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“That’s salt you’re tasting,” Khadija says, finally joining us. “We must be getting close to the shore.”
“The shore?” Seydou echoes.
“Yes, you know,” says Khadija, “the ocean?”
Seydou is still confused and Khadija shoots me a look that says, How can he not know about the ocean?
“You know the ocean, Seydou,” I mutter, bristling at the things she didn’t say. “It’s like a big lake with salt in it, so there’s different fish. Remember, Moke told us about the ocean once.”
Khadija looks away.
That’s right, I think. Just because we didn’t go to a private school in the city doesn’t mean that we don’t know anything.
Khadija peeks outside and I do the same. Huge, shadowy containers, taller than our truck, stretch in rows off to our right. I look out the other side. They stretch off to our left too. It makes me feel trapped and slightly nauseous. I can’t see over them and I have the sinking, nightmarish feeling that they go on forever in all directions and we’ll never escape. Our truck turns left. I can’t see the gate we came through anymore.
“We need to get out,” whispers Khadija beside me. “And maybe you should keep the pills.”
I push the small box into my pocket and nod in agreement. I don’t want to get any farther into this maze and I really don’t want to be found when they unload the truck.
“Let’s go,” I say. I help Khadija to the edge and grip her forearms as she braces herself against the truck. Then, leaning as far as I can without falling out, I lower her to the ground. I let go and she drops lightly to her feet. The truck has slowed enough, navigating its way through the containers, that she can keep up with us as I do the same thing for Seydou. Because I can only hold on to one of his arms, it’s hard to lower Seydou without him being banged against the metal. He hisses in pain when this happens but doesn’t say anything. As soon as Khadija wraps her arms around his legs, I let go.
Vaulting out after them, I land with a jarring thump I feel in my knees and at the base of my skull. Then I jog over to where they’re standing in the road. Worried that another truck might come behind us, or that someone might glance into the side mirrors of the truck we just left, I lead us farther into the container maze and we vanish into the shadows.
We head in the direction we came, toward the giant metal gate. All of us are tiptoeing and whispering. Other than a distant shushing sound, which I figure must be the ocean, the night is broken only by the sounds of the fading rumble of our truck, the dripping of water off the containers, and the sound of something creaking in the wind. I’m shivering with cold and fear, three times convinced that we’re going in circles and lost forever, when the wall looms in front of us again. Off to our right is the vast metal gate, shut and guarded. Above us, the cinder-block wall looms almost beyond what I can see. The glint of what must be barbed wire at the top makes me reconsider climbing it.
“So now what?”
“I wish you would stop asking that!” moans Khadija.
“Well, we’re where you wanted to be,” I remind her.
She makes a face and says nothing, considering our options.
“We can’t climb the wall,” she muses. She’s right. Even if there weren’t any barbed wire at the top, there’s no way that Seydou could get over it with only one arm. I look around for Seydou and see that he’s slumped, exhausted, against the closest metal container. Reflexively I touch the pocket that holds his pill bottles, but Khadija only lets me give them to him three times a day, so I don’t offer him any.
“Why don’t we just wait until the truck leaves and then go through the gate?” he mumbles.
I’m about to tell him to not be so silly but then I pause and consider his plan. I look at Khadija.
“I bet they’re going to unload the truck soon,” I say.
“If not right away, then probably first thing in the morning,” she agrees.
“And they’ll have to open the gate to let them out.”
“And when they do we can run really fast,” Seydou chimes in, getting excited that we’re considering his idea.
“It’s actually not a bad plan,” says Khadija, smiling at him. “They might not even chase us that much because we’re trying to get out, not in.”
“Okay,” I say. “We’ll wait for them to open the gate and then we run for it.”
It’s hours later, when Seydou is fast asleep and Khadija and I are both dozing in and out, that the squeal of the giant hinges makes us jump to our feet. I pull Seydou up, not wanting to miss it, and we creep forward as far we can. He slumps into me when we pause, still half-asleep. I decide to forget Khadija’s stupid rules, it’s been long enough, and pop two more pills into his mouth.
“You good to run?” I ask him.
“Awó,” he mumbles, swallowing, but I’m not sure if I believe him. Hoping the pills will kick in soon, I rub his neck and lean forward to see better. When the gate swings open all the way, a truck the same size as ours pulls forward into the compound.
“Now!” I say, and start running. I can hear the slapping of the others’ feet behind me as I lead the way.
Once I’m out in the open, I feel terribly exposed. There’s a minute, when the truck is blocking the gate, where the man on the far side doesn’t see us and we can just run, but too soon that moment is over.
The man on the far side shouts, holding up a hand. The man on our side of the gate spins around to look where his friend is pointing and sees us.
He shouts at us too, and even though I don’t understand their language, it’s clear they’re telling me to stop.
I pick up speed.
When the men see this, each of them does a very different thing. The one on the far side shoves on the heavy metal door with all his might to make it close faster, trying to trap us inside. The one closest to us lets go of his half of the gate and stands to block our path. I realize that, if we don’t make it out right now, then not only will we still be trapped inside the compound, but the men will chase us. I wish one of us had been awake enough to realize this back when we were all thinking Seydou’s idea was such a great one.
Too late for regrets now. I consider my rapidly shrinking options and decide we have no choice: we need to get out. I’m ready to put on a final burst of speed to dart around the man blocking the gate, when I hear a stumble behind me. Pausing, I look back and see that Khadija is holding Seydou against her side, helping him run. They’re moving, but they’re going too slowly and Seydou is clutching the stump of his arm against his chest. I guess running was too much for him.
I whip my head around and see that I’m almost upon the men. My options have narrowed even further.
“Get him to the doctor like you promised,” I shout to Khadija, and then I brace myself and run as fast as I can right into the man who is trying to stop us, knocking us both off our feet, allowing Khadija and Seydou the time they need to scurry out the half-open gate into the night-darkened port beyond.
20
I have a moment to celebrate the view of their four ankles disappearing into the dark, knowing I’ve done the right thing, before I’m hauled up by the second man and held firmly in place. With my arms pinned, I can’t reach my machete. The man I knocked over pulls himself heavily off the ground. He’s younger than I thought, with a skinny neck poking out of his uniform collar and bulging eyes. He looks like a cross between a chicken and a frog. When he’s on his feet he cuffs me in the face.
The one who’s holding my arms, older by the sound of his voice, rumbles out a question to the younger one in the language I don’t understand. That must be what French sounds like when you’re angry. The younger one, Frog Face, cranes his head to see out the gate, then answers with an angry shrug. Clearly, they got away.
Frog Face swings the big metal gate shut and padlocks it from the inside. Something tightens in my chest when I
hear the lock click. I’m not sure if it’s anger or fear. Then he asks me a question, but he’s still not speaking a language I understand, so I just shake my head.
“You,” the man behind me asks in Bambara, giving me a little shake that pulls uncomfortably on my shoulders. “What were you doing here, huh?”
I’m surprised to hear him speaking my language, but I still don’t answer him.
Frog Face cuffs me again and now I can taste blood in my mouth.
“Answer my uncle, you street rat.” He also switches to Bambara. “What were you doing here?”
I glare at him. He hits me again.
“Stop hitting him,” the uncle says, and I’m grateful. It doesn’t take much getting hit in the head to make you dizzy, and I need to not feel that way if I’m going to escape.
“Why? He could be a spy!”
The older man laughs and I feel his grip loosen slightly. I tense, waiting for the opportunity to run like crazy. If I were to slam my head into the uncle’s face I could probably outrun Frog Face. I consider reaching for my machete again. But I see the gun at his belt and I reconsider. There’s no way to outrun a bullet.
“A spy?” says the uncle, behind me. “You watch too much television, you and those friends of yours. Who would he be spying for? Another company? Another country? Look at him, he’s skinny as a dog and his hands and feet are like rocks. He doesn’t even speak French. He’s just a poor working boy from the north.”
The nephew scowls, fingering his gun.
“We still need to know why he’s here,” he grouses.
The uncle lets go of one of my arms and turns me so that I’m facing him. He is square and solid. There’s not much resemblance to his cold-blooded frog of a nephew.
“I’m of a mind to let you go, but you need to tell me what you were doing here,” he says, looking into my eyes. His eyes have rings of tiredness under them and his voice is patient. A quick image of Oumar standing off to the side of his idling truck, talking to a wall while we walked away, flashes through my mind. For the first time, I wonder if I can get out of this by using words. It feels really uncomfortable, trusting so much: first Khadija, then Oumar, and now this guard. But I look at him with the most honest expression I can muster and I tell him the truth.
The Bitter Side of Sweet Page 18